Why Mentoring Matters

It is fascinating to observe traders on a trading floor and then observe their performance over time. One of my consistent observations is that successful money managers alternate their time in three modes:

In a group on the trading floor, getting a feel for what people are thinking and doing and exchanging information;

In individual conversations on the trading floor, discussing observations and ideas with colleagues with specialized expertise;

Off the trading floor, engaging in research and immersed in idea generation.

Drawing upon the "quiet revolution" work of Susan Cain, I've described this as a process of getting loud and getting quiet. The originality of the portfolio manager's ideas is directly tied to two deep dives: one with the environment and the other more internal, synthesizing these inputs.

More recently I've noticed yet another dynamic on the trading floor. Traders are grouped in teams and actively share ideas throughout the day. At key junctures, however, some traders break away from their groups and meet with a team member who has become a kind of study buddy. Each member of the pair shares goals and ideas with the other and the pair meets during and at the end of the day to monitor progress, offer guidance, and help each other learn from their market observations and trading. Since engaging in this form of mutual mentoring, the traders have typically shown unusual strides in both their focused mindset and their trading performance.

In an insightful post, Susan Cain recently described how one-on-one is the best way to learn. She cites an intriguing article from Clive Thompson, who showed how one teacher was making use of the online learning resource, Khan Academy. Khan Academy is a repository of lessons in areas ranging from math to science and engineering to computing, history, and economics. Students learn at their own pace, individually, and then work with the teacher one-on-one when they become stuck or have questions. In this model, the classroom teacher serves as a learning mentor--and the one-on-one that I observe on trading floors becomes a dominant mode within the classroom.

Cain explains that the power of the one-on-one learning model is its ability to harness deliberate practice. Working individually, a person can progress at their own pace. Once they hit a snag in learning, they can target that challenge through work with the instructor. That channels the student's efforts to the areas most needing work, making the learning process more efficient. Thompson cites the work of Benjamin Bloom, who found that students pulled out of the classroom for individual instruction performed significantly better than students learning in the larger group.

One of the most fascinating developments in the field of psychotherapy is the development of treatment manuals for areas ranging from anxiety and depression to mindfulness and stress management. Many of these manuals have been made available online as internet-based brief therapies. Gerhard Andersson, Ph.D. and Per Carlbring, Ph.D. summarize research evidence finding that these online therapies work best when they are guided, with weekly support and feedback from a therapist. Note how this transforms the therapist's role to one of mentoring, turning the treatment process into the one-on-one learning described by Cain and Thompson. When I directed a student counseling service at a medical school, I found that the most frequent interval of sessions was not daily, weekly, or monthly, but intermittent. Students worked on their problems on their own, consulting with me at points of particular challenge.

In medical school, the one-on-one learning occurs within a matrix structure, where one is both mentor and mentee. An advanced medical student supervises junior students and in turn are supervised by a junior resident physician. The junior resident is supervised by a senior resident, who is supervised by an attending physician. "Each one teach one" is the motto for mentoring that moves students forward, but also cements the learning of the mentors. Some of the best educational outcomes I observed while on the full-time faculty of a medical school faculty occurred when there was a good fit between student and mentor, encouraging dynamic engagement. This was notable in the case of women physicians mentoring female medical students, where the learning occurred at both professional and personal levels, transforming mentoring into active role modeling.

In each of these settings, however, it is the quality of the individual work between meetings with mentors that helps determine the pace of learning. Susan Cain, in her book on Quiet, notes that the ability to work in solo--and the capacity to not only tolerate solitude but embrace it--is essential to creativity and deep learning. All too often, collaboration leads to groupthink and shallow, consensus perspectives. When we progress at our own pace and then leverage the input of mentors at points of challenge, we forge our own, unique developmental paths. Mentoring matters for human performance, but only when we sustain the individual work that turns learning lessons into deliberate practice.

I am Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY. I work as a performance coach for hedge fund portfolio managers and traders and have written several books on trading psychology. I have also written ...